If you’re not honest with me
by planet p
Summary: AU; Miss Parker and Lyle have a discussion which doesn’t serve to improve her already aggravated mood. / Please take note of the rating.
1. Chapter 1

The slap was as jarring to her, she thought, as it must have been to him, but… it had been his own fault, really. He'd brought it on himself, staring like that!

He sat up straighter and rubbed his face, but, oddly, not the side she'd slapped him on. "Yep?"

Before she could help it, she'd already made a face. "You were sleeping," she stated.

He frowned, "Yeh. That's not illegal, is it?"

She went to say something, but thought better of it, thinking, all the while, _Who sleeps with their eyes open?_

Maybe she'd ask Sydney.

Broots was in the other room, talking with Sydney. She could hear their voices through the wall, coming in from the open door, but neither of them seemed to have paid much attention to the slap she'd just given her brother.

She'd been looking through what Jarod had left, deciding that she was right, they'd needed to stay in town because Jarod wasn't done, not quite yet. They might… She shook her head. "I can't do this on my own!" she snapped. Why was she the only one taking this thing seriously? Why were Sydney and Broots yapping in the other room?

"Alright," Lyle conceded. "Do you want a coffee? I think I might need one."

She crossed her arms, and thought about the offer for a moment. She _could_ do with a coffee. "That would be nice," she said carefully. She always had to be careful with her brother; he was just liable to take anything she said the wrong way, as though she were encouraging his unhealthy feelings for her.

"Okay," he replied vaguely, heading for the door.

She picked up a tourism pamphlet that Jarod had left for them at his latest 'temporary residence' and studied the photograph of some place in Virginia.

She'd looked at three or four pamphlets when he came back in with the coffees and put one down on the table for her. She let it sit there, debating with herself whether to trust it or not.

He went on talking as though they'd been in the middle of a conversation when he'd gone out to make the coffees, but they hadn't been, and it took a moment for her to catch onto what he was talking about.

"I don't find anything particularly wrong with those sort of relationships, so long as both parties are consenting. I mean, if they're happy with it and it's their choice. But I understand; you don't think of me that way, and it upsets you that I do."

"Why's that?" she asked. "That you don't see anything wrong with… that sort of thing?" She told herself not to rise to the deliberate _I understand_ and _And it upsets you that I do_ crap! What a load of fucking crap! As if he even cared that she was upset by anything he did!

"We're not related. Not our minds… or souls… whatever you'd like to call them."

"What if I only believe in what I can see? What if I don't believe in anything other than the physical body?" She could feel it now, she was dreading going back to looking through all of those tourism pamphlets as though it was some sick joke; this wasn't a holiday, despite that she got to travel around; she never got the chance to see anything real that she could take back with her, to take it in.

"If that's your belief, that's your belief."

"You're not going to try to change my mind?" she asked.

"Why should I? It's up to you to come to change yourself, otherwise… it just never sits right. It doesn't work right if you're only ever told about it and you never formulate your own interpretation of it, if you never connect with it. I don't think it ever does, not properly."

"And what about if someone says, 'You shouldn't drive over this speed limit'?"

"There's a little bit of what we'd call 'common sense' involved in the decision making in that case, but you're right, too. Let's take for example, it's raining, and you're in your car. Are you going to drive slower because of the deteriorated road conditions: visibility, traction with the road, et cetera? Or are you going to drive faster because, once it gets warmed up, the engine responds better with the moisture in the air?"

"Me? I try to obey the road signs."

"Why?"

"I don't want to land a fine, of course."

"Not because it might be unsafe, for yourself, or the other road users, or pedestrians, or because you're worried you'll damage your car if you… run into the back of someone who's backing out, something like that?"

"A bit of that, too."

"Because that's what we're told to expect to… consider, if questioned."

"No, not just that. I don't want to… run somebody over, particularly."

He smiled. "No."

"No." She picked up her coffee for something to do, a distraction, and stared at the front of the closest pamphlet. Normal people didn't smile about that sort of thing. "Have you seen any of Virginia?" she asked, after taking a sip of her coffee. Of course, it was exactly how she took her coffee. At the back of her mind, a voice which sounded very much like her own snapped, _Creep!_

"Yeah. Some. You know, that's where I met May Lin."

"No. I didn't. Know that's where you'd met your wife," she added.

"Yeh."

She sipped her coffee, keeping her expression light. "So… why did you get married?" she asked, a little while later. He'd obviously brought her up for a reason. Maybe he wanted to boast about how good of a husband he'd been, when she'd been a very bad wife, or that _he_'d been right, and, whatever had happened, she'd been wrong. She wasn't in the mood to argue; anything she could learn about him that might be helpful to getting him locked away, and away from her and the people she cared about, so much the better!

He frowned, and bit his lip, which she found odd. It wasn't something she saw him do much. It was a nervous, undecided, _Shut up, you, don't you just open your stupid mouth and say that!_ thing. In other words, not his thing.

"My friend, Jimmy, he wanted to be a lawyer. His dad wanted him to be a doctor, so I guess he decided, at that point, he'd be a lawyer. They used to argue… a lot. And I'm not saying that Edward didn't care for him a great deal, but… I think Jimmy missed his mother. She died when he was young, and… Ignacia and I both had a mother and father. But, that's getting off topic, the thing is, he was going to move away, to study at law school."

"Did Jimmy know May Lin?"

"No. No, they never met. I- I was just wondering where that would have been… where he would have gone to study."

She didn't frown, or smile, but she'd noticed how he'd steered away from the subject of his wife. "Was it just Raines, who instigated the whole thing?" she asked, hoping to get on his side, to get him to open up about something at least. She still had most of her coffee to finish, and she wasn't going to be sifting through Jarod's things when she was drinking her damn _coffee_. She got a break, at least!

"William? No, it was really nothing to do with William. It was about us, and really, my mother, Elsie. She'd confided in Jimmy about her physical abuse, and he'd wanted to help her."

Ignoring the _William_ thing, she asked, "You didn't want her to get help?"

"No. I mean, yeah. But… she'd only felt comfortable enough to tell him because… she felt he cared. They'd been in a relationship, and they were going to go away together, after they'd dealt with… all of it. Which, I guess, really meant my father and I."

"She was going to leave you? With him? And… your best friend was going along with this? Maybe even had instigated it?" Parker pressed.

Lyle frowned. "I guess I didn't… think about it from that point of view. It just never came up, because… I suppose I knew all along it was never going to eventuate." He stared at the wall for a long moment, as though he wanted to look at the floor but thought that would be sending the wrong message. "No, you know, Ignacia and I had decided that we were going to leave. Together. We were going to leave together. We… would take Jimmy's car. He… had a car. Neither of us did, and, we didn't have a license, but Ignacia wasn't so bad at driving, and she'd driven Jimmy's car before. We were just going to… take it. But…" he rubbed his face as though annoyed, or upset, "Elsie was special to me. She was my mother and, we had something special."

"Was Ignacia your girlfriend?"

He nodded. "My best friend, and… girlfriend. I think… she was really in love with Jimmy."

"Were you mad about that?"

"No. I was sad. Ignacia loved me, and, I suppose, I loved her, but… I wasn't in love with her, and she wasn't in love with me. We were together because we trusted each other."

"What do you mean?"

"I'd never do that, hold it over her that we'd got together, or… _hit_ her. She was one of my best friends." He turned to look at her, suddenly looking away from the wall, a wet shine sparkling in front of his eyes. "You know, I never even considered what she might feel! I just… got so mad! And! It was all just about me! It wasn't about Jimmy, or Elsie, or Lyle – just me! I was mad because she was my mother and Jimmy had no right messing with that, because she'd chosen me, out of all of the other… babies, she'd chosen me – and she loved _me_! Why the fuck was she messing around with him! He was just some… doctor's kid! He wasn't anybody! He wasn't even my best friend anymore. We didn't even know each other."

Parker frowned slightly, saying nothing. She was afraid, if she said anything, Lyle might hit her, he looked about in that mindset, to want to hit something, or cry. And, as she'd never seen him cry about anything, she figured, if anything happened, it would be the hitting. It was strange, though, how he hadn't really blurted it all out, but took him time getting it out, as though it might have been the first time he'd really talked about it.

But, of course, she reminded herself, that was what he _wanted_ her to think. She always had to keep reminding herself of who she was, who he was, and who she was to _him_.

Lyle looked away from her, to the doorway, blinking a few times.

"Were your mom and you involved in a sexual relationship?" she asked, before she could stamp on her foot or pinch herself to stop herself. She didn't flinch, or blush, though; she knew you had to be direct, if you were going to be anything at all, and, in any case, she wasn't going to stand for insinuation without substantiation; it made her sick.

"Yeh," he replied blankly.

"How long had that been going on for?"

Lyle shook his head slightly. "Maybe a year? I think, about a year. Thereabout, yeah."

"Did your father know?"

"No."

"And, when you'd left with your girlfriend, what did you think would happen to your mother?"

"I thought it would get better, with her and Lyle."

"Was there a particular reason you thought that?"

"I'd always been the thing between them. I started it, see. The… separation. Mum started to care more about me than him. I think, that really got to him. It hurt him. He… I don't think he'd wanted a child. I think that had been her longing; she'd been the one who'd wanted a child. He'd agreed because it was what she'd wanted. You have to understand that he did love her, it was just… damaged… And, to a great extent, I became the symbol for that damage, the… manifestation of it. I was there, and it never got better, it never seemed to get better between them. It only got worse. I thought, if I went away, she'd have nothing to… fight him on, and they'd… Crazy!"

She refrained from leaping away from him in shock – thinking, sarcastically, _Thanks for that_ – and let him go on.

"And I would be getting away from all of that!" he continued.

"You'd be leaving her, with the man who hurt her, the man who'd hurt you. Was that okay?"

"He _loved_ her!"

"But he hit her?"

"He didn't know how to do that, how to love her anymore – it was almost like she didn't want him to love her! That's how it came across! But, of course, she loved him, too. It was just, that communication. And there I was – stuck in the middle of _that_, only making it worse! Dividing them! No, right now, you've got to think about it like this because that's what a parent does! That's what a father, what a mother, does! You're not a wife, or a husband, you're a parent! They couldn't be both! Not completely. It was always a compromise! I was a decision made in haste, and, almost in ill taste, almost as though… I'd been nothing more than an idea my mother had read in a magazine one day and seized upon. Okay, so you want to be happy, then start a family! It wasn't thought out – not nearly enough, they were just two people with very poor communication skills between them and everything, everything they did was wrong! They loved each other, but they didn't have the first idea what they both wanted. And they _couldn't_ talk about it! It was perfect, and talking about it meant admitting that it wasn't!"

"And you thought, if you left, it would just stop? Everything would just… miraculously go back to how it had been between them before you'd ever even been considered?"

"I know! It was _stupid_!"

"You were going to take Ignacia away from Jimmy, who she really loved, and… and he was your friend, too, but that was okay, you were going to leave him, too, take his car and leave…"

Lyle nodded.

"You wouldn't get hit anymore, if you left. Your mom wouldn't get hit. Jimmy would be able to go away to law school with no regrets – and everything would be brighter, so much better, perfect! What about Raines?"

"So what? He was just another psychiatrist."

"That's honestly what you thought?"

"Yeah."

Parker frowned. "Why did you start up a sexual relationship with your mother if you thought it would drive her away from your father, who she was in love with?"

"She was lonely. All he ever did was hit her. I guess I thought it would be okay."

"It wasn't to spite your father, even if you never intended him to find out about it?"

"No. I didn't want to hurt him. Hurting someone only ever encourages them to hurt someone else, that was how I saw it."

"But even so, your mother was more important _to you_ than your father? And your mother, it's what she wanted, too? She wasn't coerced into it in any way? Maybe… because she felt guilty for never being able to stop your father from hitting you?"

Lyle made a face, disturbed, "No."

"You don't think that could have had anything to do with it, not in any way, however small a degree?"

"I don't know. She loved Lyle."

"But she cheated on him. Not once, but twice."

"She thought he didn't love her."

"Because he hit her! Which had started, because of you. Because you'd come along and gotten between them, because she'd started to care more about you than him, because you'd suddenly come first! Don't you think he should have felt the same way; fair enough, the kid's important, too?"

"Not all parents think like that. You can't force it if it's not there!"

"But they know, if they want to keep the kid, that they at least have to show it some care!"

"I wasn't thrown out of the house! I was allowed to eat, to go to school and have friends!"

"And you were locked in the shed!"

"Not until I was older! I was too… rebellious!"

"Any half decent parent would have been cautiously proud that their child had finally got up the courage to voice their opinions, or suddenly gotten an opinion that wasn't just, _My friends do it, so I'll do it, too!_"

"No, they're not!"

Ignoring that, she said, "So Mom told Dad to make it home by a reasonable hour so you could all sit down to dinner together, or read some boring picture book before bedtime, and Dad decided that she was out of line and deserved a whack for it?"

Lyle frowned at the floor, as though not trusting himself to look at her.

At this point, she didn't care if he hit her. She was mad, and she wanted him to know that. Hell, she'd hit him back, if it came to that. They could have a real fight; they'd never got to have any as kids. "Is that, or is that not, how it started?"

"I didn't stop him. I just… let him," Lyle said to the floor.

"And how were you, a little kid, going to stop him, an adult, from hitting her? Shouldn't that have been up to her? Shouldn't _she_ have said something to someone?"

"I didn't. I didn't say anything."

"Because you were a kid! Jesus! You didn't want to get Mom and Dad in trouble. You were scared that whatever it was that would happen if you said something, it would be twice as bad as Dad hitting Mom, or even worse than Dad hitting you. You couldn't tell because that whatever it was that would happen then, it would be that much worse than anything you'd ever had thrown at you before!"

"I was a baby, when they adopted me," Lyle told her suddenly, kind of plainly, looking up from the floor finally and into her face. He didn't show the slightest sign of acknowledging her anger.

"But not when Dad started hitting Mom."

"It was because she didn't want sex anymore," Lyle said blandly. "She just wasn't interested, that was all. The interest just went away. For her, at least. But not for him."

"Were there other women?"

"No. He loved her."

"But there was you."

"Yeh. He loved me, too. But it got… damaged, it got all mixed up. It got too confusing to think about it, so he didn't think about it; just… decided that that was how it was going to be. She tried to," he blinked a few times, "break us up, the three of us; she tried to send me away, when I was… six. He was so _mad_! Like she'd really hurt him! Like she'd done it purposely! She'd done it _to hurt him_! The counsellor, I told the counsellor I'd done it myself, because nobody had been paying attention to what I wanted. I think they thought I was mad, even then."

"Why didn't you tell the truth?"

"I wanted a family! I just wanted a family! Is that so bloody bad?!"

Parker frowned, pondering over the phrasing 'a family.' Was it just a Pretender thing? That they separated everything in there lives into neat, little parcels? Or was there something more to it? "You thought, if they found out, that they'd send you away, that you'd be sent away to a home, and you'd never be part of a family, _your family_, again!"

"They were my family! My parents! I loved them!"

"And Mom didn't say anything to the counsellor, even though she knew?"

"She was scared; she didn't want to get my father in trouble, he'd be mad if he got in trouble, he'd hit her again."

"He'd hit you both! But if she'd said something, maybe he'd never have got that chance again."

"No! She couldn't… do that! She loved him!"

Parker crossed her arms, she was getting so sick of this, "So one minute it was, _Sorry, honey, the kid's more important than you right now,_ and the next, _Okay, today it's your day, today I'm your wife, and who the _fuck_ is that kid anyway! You know, I don't think he's even ours, anyhow!_"

Lyle shook his head; she was misinterpreting it.

"Oh, no – she doesn't get out of this because she was a good shag!" Parker shouted in anger. For a second, nothing happened, then her eyes flickered to the door, where Sydney was standing, looking… confused or embarrassed, she wasn't sure which, or perhaps a combination of both.

She smiled. "I was just finishing my coffee," she told him pleasantly. "Then, I shall get right back to work. Feel free to get stuck into it, in the meantime."

Appearing at Sydney's side, Broots leaned closer to him and said something too quiet for Parker to make out.

Sydney nodded, "Would you?"

Broots gave a quick nod, then he was off.

Parker raised her eyebrows. "Anybody even mentions the word 'coffee' and," she made a sharp motion with her hand, "he's off like a rocket." She looked down at her own coffee, which she'd turned to pick up off the table, and frowned in vague disgust. It was cold, now.

She reeled off some _Did you know?_ she'd read in one of the tourism pamphlets, which, apparently, Sydney had known after all. Hey, nobody could say she hadn't tried!

* * *

At around eleven, they decided it would be a good time to pack it in and try to get some sleep. The items they'd salvaged from Jarod's 'place' stayed with Sydney, packed back into their boxes, and the others all filed out of Sydney's hotel suite, headed for their own.

Parker said _goodnight_ to Broots, told him not to stay up playing computer games, and walked off to her suite, listening to the heavy sound of her footfalls which accompanied her like a phantom. She was tired, and angry, and she had the suffocating feeling that she wouldn't be able to sleep because she'd be running her thoughts through her mind, over and over, trying somehow to justify her brother's version of his adoptive mother, Elsie Bowman.

She almost couldn't believe how mad she was at the woman right now, and that all of it, _all of it_, she'd brought down on herself with one stupid move. Because she'd been angry that she was the only one working on Jarod's retrieval.

Pushing any thoughts of how it was Jarod's fault from her mind, she opened the door to her suite and stepped inside, closing the door after her with a _snap_ that was just that bit too loud. She was tired, physically, but her mind refused to wind down.

Of course, it wasn't Jarod's fault, he hadn't even been there, he hadn't taken her hand and said, _Here, slap him._ He hadn't been the one to act out his frustration with physical violence. No, that'd been all her!

Suddenly, the thought disgusted her. She might have as easily given his arm a shake, but that wasn't how it had happened.

She slipped off her high heels and stalked to the bedroom, throwing herself down on the bed. In honesty, and it was something she supposed she'd known for a long time, she wasn't the nicest person out there, either! But, her saving grace, in her own eyes, had been that she'd seen herself as _getting better_, but now she wasn't sure she had been – she wasn't sure she even could!

She jammed her eyes shut, willing herself not to tear up. Just because it was a bit of a hurdle, she mentally snapped, didn't give her an easy option for default! If she wanted to be a better person, she had to do the hard work herself, and she was the only one who could!

It was like Jarod's situation, she told herself, though he'd never intentionally meant to hurt anyone, he'd still made the conscious decision to say, _Yes, it happened, and now I am going to make amends to myself by doing what I think I need to to be able to live with that. Not because anyone else thinks I should, not because it's what people would expect, not to atone for past crimes, not out of punishment because I think that if I suffer, too, if I am punished, then it all goes away, I've learnt my lesson, I get to start clean, but because it's _my_ life, and it's _my_ choice, and I simply _refuse_ to willingly allow myself to be that person ever again! I am not that person, I am a different person! I am a person who cares!_

_But what do I care about?_ she thought, channelling Jarod.

_I care about more than just myself,_ Jarod answered her.

Quiet tears slid out from underneath her closed eyelids, tickling the corners of her eyes, running into her hair. She held no pretence that it was easy for Jarod, coming to terms with it and then going on from that and actually moving on, actually doing something, and something that was better than before – but it was _so_ hard for her!

* * *

**If you're not honest with me, at least be honest with yourself** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	2. Chapter 2

Parker was woken early by the sound of crying, but, as she began to wake, the sound changed and became a heavy banging. The door!

She sat up and put her hands over her face, trying to shake off her tiredness. The banging persisted, along with her tiredness. No use. She stood up and walked to the door, her footsteps slow. Wishing the banging would let up for a few seconds, she unlocked the door and pulled it open, peering out into the hall.

She hadn't had a chance to have a look at the time, but it must have been early because the hall was awash with struggling, milky morning light from the large floor-to-ceiling windows at the end of the hall, looking out onto a grey, grey city, battling to find the shards of day, enough to build a good picture. The hazy light from outside contrasted badly with the jarringly bright artificial light that had lit the hotel's halls and spaces during the evening, desperately clutching to its glittery tiara. Her eyes hurt; she peered blearily at her brother's annoyed expression.

"Hey, no hurry, sis," Lyle quipped sarcastically, arms crossed. "Whenever you're ready, I'm sure Jarod's keen to catch up on the all gossip he's missed since he left us. We'll just sit down for coffees and have a nice, little chat whilst we're waiting for you to show. Take your time!" With a laugh, he turned sharply and stalked away.

She sighed heavily. What was his problem? The back of her head hurt, just at the base where she could feel her spine. She tried not to jar her neck too hard. She already had a migraine.

* * *

She stopped in the middle of the dirty street, stepping up onto the footpath so she was off the main thoroughfare for motor vehicles, and out of their way, and pulled in a deep breath of the grubby, urban air. She could almost feel her teeth ache; her head pounded as hard as her chest.

"Oh, come on!" she yelled after Jarod's retreating figure. "I think I need a doctor!"

Jarod's back got smaller and smaller.

She laughed, coughing loudly as she did. Of course! How typical! Wasn't it always that she _just_ missed him! "THIS ISN'T OVER!" she hollered after him.

The heavy sound of Broots catching up to her, at last, pounded through to her head. Stab! Stab, stab!

Lyle and Sydney had taken the other end of the estate. They were going to be pissed at her, she figured, and, this time, she had no-one else to blame. Lyle had figured out Jarod's clue; they'd almost had him! They'd been so close! This was going to suck, she thought.

* * *

All she'd got was a "This is fucking bullshit!" and then Lyle had decided not to talk to her, she wasn't worth the waste of his breath, which, unsurprisingly, suited her (and her migraine) just _fine_.

On the plane, she watched Broots playing Solitaire on his laptop, and drifted off into an uneasy sleep despite the pounding migraine attacking her skull with Orc-like ferocity.

She'd only been slightly hurt by her brother's anger at her incompetence.

* * *

Women, Lyle decided, were all the same. They either hated you, or they were horribly indifferent. The ones who told you they cared, well, they were just waiting on the hate to set in; they were only deluding themselves. It would happen, in the end. Why else did they set such impossibly stupid assumptions about men? So they could have them all burnt to the ground and then say, _See, I told you so; I told you they were all the same._ It was disgusting how they couldn't think, not a one of them.

His twin sister, Miss Parker, as she called herself, was just like all of the others. She hated him, too, he was sure. And, in truth, it wasn't as though she ever tried to disguise it, really.

She was no different to his adoptive mother, Elsie, who had thought she could control his father by threatening to play up, and then, when he didn't buy it, she really did; not only with her own son, but with his friend, because, in honesty, the kid hated her for allowing her husband to abuse him, and she hated him for letting it happen to him, as though he could have stopped it as a 4-year-old.

Yeah, he could see his sister playing that game.

Like Ignacia had played him. He'd always wondered why Chelsea, Jimmy's girlfriend had hated him quite so much, until he'd realised it was because she'd known all along that Ignacia had been stringing him along, that she'd been with Jimmy all along; it had been a great, big fucking joke between them, he was sure; he'd been Ignacia's perfect alibi, her boyfriend; but he'd put a stop to their laughter when he'd killed Jimmy. He'd been looking for it, really. So, maybe he'd lost his cool a bit, but really, it had made so much sense when he'd thought it over later – he'd done it to punish that bitch Chez for cheating on him – he didn't even care if the kid was his or Jimmy's, he didn't want to have anything to do with a whore's child – as much as it was to punish his mom. She'd not only been cheating on him, she'd been cheating on his dad, too. She was totally off the planet! And, to be fair, it was all her fault in the first place; he'd only been planning to leave her with that molesting lunatic, Lyle; he'd had enough of the two of them playing him for a fool at every turn.

If she hadn't fucked things up by going to Jimmy with her sob story, then Jimmy and he wouldn't have gotten into that argument; Chez and he would have run away, and he would have left that cow on the wayside somewhere to slink back home in shame. It was what she'd deserved.

Before he'd moved to the country with his parents, they'd lived in the city. Growing up in the city hadn't been ideal, but it had worked; they'd had a nice place, his parents had _real_ jobs, he'd even started in a quiet, little kindergarten filled with shady trees and green grass. When his parents had moved to the country for _him_, he'd thought all schools would be like that, but he'd been wrong. He supposed that was his fault, too! Lyle and Elsie had given up their jobs, up their comfortable lifestyle, for him, so that he could go to a smaller school, a real school with real people, a friendly, countrified attitude, and healthy environment.

But that was where the illusion of happiness had ended. His mother had lost it; she'd hated being so close to the parents – being back in the crappy, old town – she'd spent the better part of her life praying, fighting tooth and nail to shrug off as swiftly and effectively as she could, with no regrets.

After Jimmy, he really hadn't needed those girls in college.

It was pathetic how he kept getting himself into these shitty situations. He was supposed to be smart!

Oh, yeah! Just like he'd been _smart_ with that little freak, Lin, who'd been selling them _all_ out to T-Corp from the get go! Oh, he'd been real smart there!

It was obvious that she and Kyle had been playing him from the outset. Then, when he'd dealt with that treacherous bitch, her kid had fit right into the vacancy she'd left. The kid thought she could she could play her mom's game and he'd just let her do whatever because that's what dads did for their little girls; how she must have been left wondering what she'd fucked up when he'd left her! She'd known what his father had done, she'd inherited the same curse he had, after all, and she'd tried to turn him into his father; all of the hugs she wanted, _Pick me up, Daddy_, the lies about being afraid of the dark; she'd used everything he'd given her to make everything about _her_; just like her mother had!

And now, she lived in the same town; as though she'd come back for more. She was really starting to try his patience!

As if that wasn't bad enough, he'd befriended that crazy woman, Allie's, daughter, whom he'd met years ago on a job for the company; the bloody mom had tried to kill him. The daughter, Debbie, was likely nothing but her mother's daughter. He wouldn't have been surprised to hear that she'd been kicked out of nursing studies for drug abuse, just like her old woman.

Of course, Broots knew nothing of his ex's habits. He though his daughter was perfect.

It was bad enough he'd had to put up with Sam's recriminations. The only reason he'd hooked up with him in the first place was because he'd learned how close his sister had been to Sam, and how close Raines, as Sam's father, was to him. If he could manipulate Sam, manipulating them would be easy. And then Sam had befriended that posing, murdering child molester Cox. He'd only been thrown out of Africa for overstating his high school achievements in order to get into med school. Lyle had no trouble whatsoever seeing Cox in the role Cleary had painted him; he was as good a candidate as any to have killed little Ursula.

Heading back to all that empty-handed, he was in no mood to play into his sister's games today.

She could try that one on Sydney, not _him_!

* * *

Parker walked back to her office and shut the door slowly. Her neck hurt, on top of her migraine, though it had begun to lessen within the last ten minutes. They'd returned to Blue Cove safely, with nothing to show of their efforts, and she was tired and sick.

She hit the button to run through the messages on her answering machine, but the only message was utter nonsense, maintenance telling her that they'd sent out a survey which they'd appreciate filled out and returned timely: she had a week.

She sat down behind her desk and sighed. She still had the meeting with the chairman to attend, and explain her incompetence; how had Jarod got away, again. If his current mood was anything to go on, Lyle would be doing her any favours. Oh, yes, she was really looking forward to that in – she consulted her watch – forty minutes.

She switched her desktop on and opened the internet browser application and logged into her email account. She was hoping there'd be a taunting email from Jarod (who'd managed, as usual, to dig up her personal email address) she could get a laugh out of, but there was a meagre single message from the people she had her email account with, probably a service message telling her her last email had failed to send; thanks for nothing!

She clicked on the link; there was nothing in the subject line to indicate what it might be about.

_Please help!_

She started to frown, when, with the abruptness of a slap, she realised that the message had been written in French; she'd automatically translated it in her mind.

With fumbling, shaking fingers, she clicked Reply and began to type her response.

_I'm confused! Help? Are you looking for donations?_

As she clicked Send, she wouldn't allow herself to admit how rattled she was; there was no other words than those two, and there'd been no links attached that she might follow, no name to give anything away – a James, David or Jack, some tech guy somewhere; even a Tania – there'd been none of that.

She logged out of her email account and closed the application, then logged out of her staff user area, leaving the computer screen at the login screen before switching the screen off.

She left the room, pulling the door closed with a _click_ after her. She'd drop into the coffee room for a coffee before the meeting, maybe there'd be a biscuit or two left, a bit of sugar to calm her shakes.


	3. Chapter 3

Reagan Parker watched his mentor, Persephone, standing by the wall, leaning on it with one side of her body, and imagined that that was the cold half of her, that the cold from the wall had travelled through her clothes and invaded one half of her body. He imagined her shaking inside, her hands shaking, as she gripped the telephone tighter now, thinking that would stop the shakes, but only making it worse.

She glanced at him with her grey eyes, sliding a hand over the speaker in the receiver. "Ten minutes," she relayed the words of the chairman's secretary. That was how long the meeting had left to go, his brother would be able to see him then. Her eyes turned back to rest on the open doorway, where they had been before; nervous eyes.

Reagan bit his bottom lip hard, but not hard enough to make it bleed; he didn't think he'd be seeing his brother ever again, this thing that had come back, looking like his brother, it wasn't his brother at all; it just wanted them all to think that it was. His brother was dead.

He curled his hands into fists, trying to keep from scrunching up his face. _Don't upset Persy_, he told himself.

Persephone hung the phone back up on the wall, and came back over to sit down beside him; he listened to her dull footsteps as she walked, the scuffle of her clothes on the chair as she sat down; her exhalation of breath.

He lifted the back of his head from the cold wall and turned to her, smiling, straightening in his chair. "Was the application successful?" he asked, to take her mind off just waiting.

She shook her head, "I don't know; I suppose they're going to ring me back sometime and tell me, but… I'm still waiting." She smiled; cheers to that, it seemed like they spent half of their lives waiting on someone else's decisions to come through so they could make their own.

He scuffed his shoe on the floor, smiling a bit more, "I bet it will," he told her, hoping that he was wrong, hoping that the person who walked through that door would be his brother.

* * *

Outside the chairman's office, he was stopped by a Sweeper who told him, "Dr. Merchant would like to see you, sir."

He crossed his arms. "Is this really necessary now?" he asked.

"She said your brother wants to see you. He'll be unavailable in a half hour. If you honestly can't make it, I'm sure he'll understand."

Lyle shook his head, irritated. He was a kid, he wouldn't understand. Since when did kids ever understand? "Alright," he agreed. "Where's this?"

"She said the place was called Commons."

"I know the place."

The Sweeper nodded. He had expected it.

* * *

Persephone sighed, glancing across at Reagan whose blue eyes were fixed to the doorway. "Let's go sit down on the sofa, hey?" she suggested. These chairs were disgusting; her backside hurt like she'd fallen over and landed on it sometime, except she hadn't.

"No," Reagan replied.

She rubbed a hand over her face. "We won't have long, hon," she reminded him.

"I know."

"The Tower doesn't mess around. You get there on the dot when you have an appointment with them; not a minute later."

"I know."

"Just as long as we're clear, hon."

"I know!"

"Okay."

* * *

"You might have been a little quicker getting down here," Persephone told him quietly when he walked into the Commons, "we've got an appointment with the Tower in twenty minutes, and it's gonna take time getting there. It's not like I can just," she clicked her fingers, "_snap_ my fingers and, 'Wha' do y' know, kids! We're here!'"

"I just came from the chairman's office," Lyle replied. What, and _he_ could?

Persephone glanced at Reagan, who'd got to his feet and was waiting for them.

Lyle frowned, not overjoyed at the sight; what could he possibly have to talk about with a 10-year-old kid? "What is it this time?"

"He's your son, Lyle. You think you could think about someone other than yourself for," she checked her watch, shaking her head, "ten minutes?"

Glaring shortly, Lyle ignored her, and walked over to Reagan; minus the glare.

She crossed her arms. Sure, wonderful! Wasn't this cheerful, now!

* * *

"What's wrong with your brother today anyway?" Persephone asked, as they stood in the elevator waiting for it to take them up to the level the chairman's office was on. She leant over and stabbed the button again, annoyed that it was taking so long.

"Jarod got away," Reagan replied dully.

"Jarod _always_ gets away!"

Reagan didn't reply.

She gave his arm a little push, smiling. Wasn't he gonna tell her, now?

"That isn't my brother," Reagan grumbled, without looking up from the spot at the bottom of the elevator door.

Persephone grinned. "He sure looks like your brother to me!" she said, trying to liven his mood up a bit.

"My brother's dead!" Reagan told her.

"I haven't seen many dead people who can still walk and talk," she admitted.

Reagan glared at the bottom of the door. "I have."

"No you haven't," she told him teasingly, "don't be silly!"

Reagan looked across at her. "That isn't my brother! That thing killed my brother, and now it thinks it's going to get away with pretending to be him! But I'm telling you now, it's got another thing coming! Bobby and me, we're going to stop it!"

Persephone crossed her arms. She wasn't impressed by all of this drama. "Who's Bobby?" she demanded.

"My uncle."

"I beg your pardon, young man! Who?"

"Lyle's brother."

"You mean Mirage?" she corrected. Lyle only had one other brother, and both she and Reagan knew that Lyle wasn't really his older brother.

"Mirage's name is Ethan. I mean my brother's brother, Bobby."

"You know," Persephone told him, "when Lyle was younger, that used to be his name."

"No, it was Bobby's name!" Reagan argued.

"Well, I'm pretty sure it was your brother's name, too."

"Bobby isn't Lyle!" Reagan told her angrily. "He's a different personality!"

"I see, a different personality. And do you have any of these… different personalities?"

"No!"

"No?"

"No!"

"Just Lyle, huh?"

"Yes!"

"Okay." She sighed. "Should I be passing this on to anyone…? William?"

"He knows."

"He does."

"Yes!"

"So why has this new personality suddenly shown up now?"

"I don't know."

"Nothing could have happened to… trigger it?"

"I don't-"

The elevator came to a standstill and the doors opened.

Reagan's dark expression evaporated, to be replaced by a blank one.

Persephone didn't let her worry or disappointment show; she put on her psychiatrist face and stepped out of the elevator. Raines would want to know about this, in any case, she reminded herself, and Lyle had seemed strange when he'd spoken to her, like he couldn't really care less about her or Reagan. Which he didn't usually do unless he thought it would be dangerous otherwise.

If Reagan said something was up, she was inclined to believe him. He was a Class Five Empath; he wouldn't fool her around just for the fun of it.

She didn't like the sounds of this Bobby one bit; if Reagan was right, then the trauma that had triggered Bobby's personality change had probably been killing his best friend, Jimmy. She had a bad, bad feeling about all of this.


	4. Chapter 4

"And Bobby, he told you all this… when you saw him?"

Reagan frowned. They'd made it out of the Tower appointment in time for a late lunch, and come back to her office afterward. He hadn't really been hungry, anyway. Reagan sat in a chair in front of her desk. "Bobby wrote Mel a letter, I'm keeping it safe until I can give it to her," he confessed.

Persephone put a hand over her mouth. "Bobby 'wrote' a letter to someone…! Who is Mel?!"

"My sister… aunt."

"How exactly did you get this letter?!"

"It was in her pigeon hole. I didn't want him to find it; I couldn't just leave it there. He's allowed into Commons-"

"Hang on! Mel? Mel, as in Melody?"

Reagan scratched the top of his wrist. "Yes."

"They experimented on Miss Parker when she was a kid?" Persephone asked seriously.

"I don't know. Not seriously, I don't think. But… Catherine wanted her to be able to interact with the other kids, you know, down in Commons, so she got her a pigeon hole, too. Like the others had. But, you know, Sydney never brought Jarod down to Commons much to 'interact'… which… was probably because Alex was always so badly behaved and he didn't want to expose him to bad behaviour…"

"Alex wasn't just the only one," Persephone pointed out.

"Well, I don't like Alex," Reagan muttered.

"Oh, no, Kyle was an angel, I'm sure!"

"At least he didn't think _everyone _but _him_ were _savages_! Just because he was a _Tower_ Pretender!"

Persephone shook her head, "Kyle wasn't a Tower Pretender. I want to see this letter."

"I hid it."

"Well you can jolly well go and get it," she told him. "Right now."

Reagan huffed, and got up from his chair, crossing his arms. "If I don't come back, you know who did it. Theo!"

"Who is Theo?"

"The other one," Reagan muttered darkly.

"I'll give you 'the other one'! The both of you are going to-"

Reagan slammed the door loudly on his way out.

She sighed.

* * *

Reagan walked back into her office and held out a plain, white envelope for her to take. "Here you go, Mrs. Persephone Alex!"

"Shut it! That isn't even Alex's surname! Who knows what his bloody surname was! If he even had one!"

"Everyone has a surname," Reagan told her, taking a seat in the chair he'd left minutes ago.

"Not everyone," she murmured.

"What, like, E.T. not everyone, because, you know, they never did say what E.T.'s surname was?"

She rolled her eyes, glancing down at the handwriting the note was written in. "God! This isn't even-! Who wrote this?! A 5-year-old?!"

"Bobby wasn't very good at writing, I gather."

"You 'gather'!"

"Yes, I gather."

"He might have had the _intelligence_ to have _Lyle write_ it _out_ for _him_!" she groused.

"Lyle's dead."

"Uh-huh, I'll believe that when the Death Certificate's sitting in my hot, little hands! Your brother is a compulsive liar, a lunatic, and now, apparently, even _more_ of a lunatic than I'd first thought!"

"Haven't you ever heard the saying that you shouldn't be disrespectful to the dead?" Reagan asked jokingly.

"Shut it! I'm trying to make head or tail of this jarble!"

"I think it's 'garble.' The word."

"It's a new word!" Persephone snapped. "Don't insult my word!"

Reagan rolled his eyes. "I didn't find it hard to read i-"

"Oh, hush up! I'm not a bloody Empath, as you will, _no_, _might_ have happened to notice!"

Reagan crossed his arms; she was being unfair. "Just because I'm an Empath doesn't mean anything," he grumbled.

"So what are we going to do, hmm?" Persephone snapped, looking up from the letter she'd been trying to read. "How are we going to 'off' this Theo character! Put a bullet in his head! Is that what you want?"

"No," Reagan muttered, not looking at her.

"Then what? What, for God's sake!"

"It's not even his," Reagan mumbled. "Bobby let Lyle… take over charge of it. Theo didn't even ask!"

"Of it! Of… 'The Body'!"

"Yeah."

"And what's that supposed to mean? So, he skipped a bit of the red tape? Are you going to hang a person for that? As if any of us need more red tape!"

Reagan's face darkened. "Bobby never would have let him be in charge! He's not even like us!"

"And what are 'us' like?"

"He's not an Empath," Reagan said quietly.

Persephone laughed, putting the letter down on her desk so she didn't crinkle it with her hands. "I don't think so!" she assured him.

"That's what happens, when another personality emerges. They're not like other personalities in a regular multiple personality disorder; they're to screen the Empathy. Theo isn't an Empath, no matter what you say."

"Lyle was less Empathic than Bobby?"

"In a way."

"What do you mean, 'in a way'? It's either a _yes_ or a _no_! You can't have it both ways!"

"Lyle looked at Bobby as his little brother, but that's not how Bobby looked at Lyle. To Bobby, Lyle wasn't his older brother. He let Lyle think that's how it was, but it wasn't; they weren't two personalities, they weren't even separate personalities, not really. Otherwise, how else would Lyle have had Bobby's memories? But, that's okay, I guess, that fits with the successive personality part – but they're not different personalities! Because they're not – their personalities aren't _different_!"

"And Theo's is?"

"Yes."

"So Bobby and Lyle are the same person?"

"And Teddy."

"Teddy?"

"I didn't name him that," Reagan defended.

"And I suppose that's because he's cuddly and soft."

"No."

"Then, it's a joke?"

"It's a reference to their name."

"Teddy, Robert, I'm not seeing the connection."

"Theodore."

"The name on the… certificate, right."

Reagan nodded.

"So, Teddy's a fairly recent personality?"

"No."

"So… What? Lyle knew that he was adopted, and… that his name was Theodore… already, before Miss Parker did?"

Reagan made a face, "Yes!"

"'Yes!'" Persephone imitated his flabbergasted tone. Just because she wasn't catching onto this as quick as he, apparently, was, didn't make her stupid, or ignorant!

"Maybe Alex told him," Reagan suggested.

"Forget it! The only thing Alex would be telling anyone, if he was still around, _mind you_, was that we were all savages!"

"Maybe we are."

"Shut it, you!"

"He could have found out by himself."

"You think he found the adoption papers?"

"Maybe."

Persephone nodded, and sighed heavily, glancing at the clock on her wall. "Oh, God, I need to talk to Angelo."

Reagan frowned at the desk. Was it like a rule that she had to talk to him every five hours, or something? He tried not to think it was because she really, really wanted them to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Which, of course, he saw nothing wrong with – but he had a feeling Angelo did. Timmy might have liked Faith, but that didn't mean Angelo saw Persephone as anything other than… his carer, or psychiatrist.

"But your father's not a Class Five Empath, is he? He was higher than you, so maybe he just knew. That they weren't his parents."

Reagan said nothing; he was trying not to cry. He hated how she'd used 'was,' but he knew, too, that it was the right thing to do. He couldn't delude himself about this; Theo was trouble. Theo didn't care about any of the things Bobby or Lyle had, he just cared about himself. He didn't like Theo.

At this point, he would have preferred Alex to Theo, and that was really, really sad to say.

* * *

Angelo wouldn't look at her, he was staring at the wall instead. She found that annoying. "You've nothing to say," she put forth, "to this… allegation?"

Angelo rolled his eyes and prodded her shoulder.

She slapped his hand away. Talk to Raines! Why was it always Talk to Raines! Raines would lose it, as it was, when she told him. She wasn't looking forward to that, at all.

"At least tell me if it's possible. This successive personality tripe!"

Angelo glared at her, slowly looking away from the wall. "Been known."

"It's been known! Great! Why are you glaring at me? Contrary to popular belief, I didn't do this!"

Angelo made a face. He wasn't glaring at her! He was angry, and it wasn't as though he could make himself not glare when he was angry. He was just _looking_ at her!

She crossed her arms, obviously not catching the face; or maybe he'd just felt like he'd made a face and he hadn't really, it was hard to tell. "But, keep in mind, according to Reagan, this time, this one is actually a multiple personality, alter, whatever you want to call it."

Angelo ran his tongue over the bottom of his teeth.

Persephone leant away from him. She didn't get what that was about.

He didn't fill her in; she really wanted to know that he was a multiple possessor – that he had been a multiple possessor – and that his other expression was a Reaper! (Even his home corporation, T-Corp, hadn't wanted to know. They'd been much more interested in the fact that he'd been an Empath.) No! She did not want to know that. He had a feeling it wouldn't make well for the subject of any good dreaming material.

Still, he wasn't certain about the amount of good it would do if he was to try to fix this problem with violence; he really didn't want to have to kill Tory if he could help it.

He poked her in the shoulder again. Raines would know something, why wasn't she talking to him already?

"I get it!" she growled. "Would you stop doing that! You're going to give me a bruise." She didn't really think Angelo could control his reactions, which was why she hadn't encouraged hugging or anything with the kids; she wouldn't want them to get hurt, though she knew how much they liked psychical contact, and how important it was to a healthy psyche.

She sighed and stood up from the sofa. "Don't tell me your hungry again?" she grumbled, finally formulating an explanation for the teeth thing.

Angelo turned to glare at the door to say, Just go!

She shook her head and walked off. She almost felt like humming to herself, because talking to Raines was going to be anything _but_ cheerful!

* * *

"ARE YOU IN YOUR OFFICE, OR NOT?" Persephone yelled, though the door. "YOU MIGHT AT LEAST HAVE THE COURTESY TO PICK UP THE PHONE WHEN I _TRY_ TO RING YOU! Oh, don't tell me I'm seriously talking to an empty room!"

The door was opened, a short while later, by Raines, wearing an annoyed expression. "I'm seeing a patient," he hissed.

She smiled, "A female patient?"

"That has nothing to do with it," Raines told her with a frown.

She shook her head. "Nothing! Gotcha!" She shot him a wink.

"Look, what is this about that… that you have to shout at me from the other side of the door as though you're mad, or a banshee."

"Maybe I am, a banshee," she said. "Robert. It's about Robert."

"Robert bloody who?"

She tucked some of her hair behind her ear. His patient was probably listening to what they were saying, he'd want to mind to keep his voice down and try to limit any words like 'bloody.' "L-Y-L-E," she muttered, leaning in closer so she could whisper it.

"Lyle! Why don't you just use his name, for goodness sakes!"

Aggravated, Persephone put her hands on his arms to turn him around and gave him a push back toward his desk. "Shut up and finish your session with your patient!" she growled. "I'll be waiting, out here, if the sharks haven't popped by and had a nibble while the two of you are nattering away."

Raines frowned at her very seriously – oh, yes, she was losing it, she thought, with sarcasm – and he closed the door.

She crossed her arms. Since when did he have patients?

* * *

"He's in with a patient," she informed Fulton when she dropped by, slowing her pace to a stroll and eyeing the door, for a moment that was just that little bit too long, before turning her glance suspiciously to Persephone.

"We're getting married in autumn," Persephone told her. She laughed, though Fulton's expression had remained suspicious and unmoved. "I'm joking!" She tucked some more hair behind her ear. "Not… not about the patient thing. He really does have a patient. Ooh, and… ah… I'm next."

Fulton dug a slip of paper out of her lab coat pocket and passed it to her. "Tell him it's from Dr. Fulton, will you," she said, and turned away.

Persephone watched her walk away and disappear around a corner, feeling slightly annoyed that Fulton had presumed that she wouldn't know who she was. Just because Fulton kept to herself, took her lunch in her office, and was generally anti-social, didn't mean people didn't know who she was! Or maybe she'd said it to be insulting, as per her same old hate of Raines for appointing Cox as Deputy Director when she thought she'd be able to swindle it.

She frowned. And really, it wasn't as though she'd really be so ignorant as to not know who she was, Raines and her were always arguing, as though, if they were ever to be told not to, they'd have nothing exciting left in their lives. It was just the arguing, keeping them from chucking it all in and topping themselves.

She wasn't sure she could buy that, but she was sure it was what some people were starting to suspect.

More than likely, it was just that Fulton liked to be in charge, which, in this case, she unfortunately wasn't – and Raines was; too bad.

"Persephone?"

Persephone spun about in fright, and let out a heavy sigh. "Kermit's Kellogg's! I thought you were Fulton! Can you believe, she actually thought I didn't know who she was!"

"Do I look like Fulton?" Lyle asked.

"You're too tall," she joked. She held her hand up to approximate Fulton's height. "She's shorter."

Lyle frowned.

She glanced at the door quickly. "Oh, no you don't! I have an appointment!"

"An appointment?"

"Oh, yes!" she assured him, in a slightly pompous voice.

"With Dr. Raines? Is this a professional appointment, or is it more of a personal matter."

"Personal," she replied, and added, straight-faced, "sexual dysfunction." She had a feeling were anyone else around they would have either given her very funny looks, or cracked up.

Lyle just said, "It doesn't sound very urgent."

"You might say that, but, let me tell you, it makes me very angry."

"You don't look very angry, to me."

"You didn't see me with Fulton a moment ago. She left, terrified out of her wits."

"I find it hard to imagine that."

She grinned, "Be that as it may, sonny-" She burst into laughter, and turned away from him quickly.

"Perhaps it is quite urgent," Lyle commented.

"It's just that I have an appointment," she returned, turning back to face him. "Is it very important? Your thing? I could wait… if it isn't going to take long. Pop over to the coffee machine and get myself a coffee, that sort of thing…"

"No. It's not important."

"Are you sure."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure."

She rolled her eyes. "Sorry about the 'sonny' thing."

"No problem."

"Are you doing anything on Friday, after work?"

"Yeah."

"Damn!"

He smiled. "Why?"

"I thought we could go down to Whiskers Blake for a drink. Guess I'll stay home and watch _the_ _Simpsons_. Fun!"

"Perhaps I could reschedule," Lyle offered.

"Really! A drink sounds so much better than _the Simpsons_!"

"Yeah. I'll see what I can arrange."

"Wonderful! Hey, and… I'm sorry about narking you out earlier. Reagan just really wanted to see you, and he's got SIMs all afternoon."

"You're not taking those?"

"No! No, they're with the Tower."

"So you're not supervising, either?"

"They asked me to sit this one out."

"Wonder what that's about."

"Yeah, but I didn't want to argue with them. You know how they are. One wrong word and they start getting all nosy."

Lyle nodded.

"Oh." She pointed at the door to Raines's office. "Do you know he has a patient?"

"I'd figured as much, or else… would you be standing out here talking to me?"

"A valid point." She sighed. "I heard Field didn't go as planned."

"Does it ever?"

"You know, um, that's partly why I'm not on Field. I'd be awful on Field, actually. I don't get out much, for starters. Can you imagine me trying to chase someone? I'd fall over the first garbage bin or cat that came along!" She laughed.

"You don't strike me as clumsy," Lyle remarked.

"More than you know," she told him.

They glanced at the door once more. "Well, I guess I'll leave you to it," Lyle replied.

She nodded. "And you'll be there, Friday, yeah?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"I'll be very disappointed if you're not!" she called after him.

"I'll be there," he replied, turning back around to tell her.

"Mind, watch where you're walking!" she joked in mock worry, and turned back to face Raines's office door. She only let her fear show on her face when Lyle was safely out of sight. She'd always only ever thought of Lyle as her brother, and, were that have to have been Lyle, he would have known that. She had the feeling Theo pretended to be charming to all women, when, underneath, he was anything but. She could understand why Bobby, or Lyle, wouldn't be happy about that.

As much as he'd harped on about his dubious intentions towards women, or let people think his intentions were dubious, Lyle always tried to treat them fairly.

_Don't be a fool, Persephone_, she told herself, _you don't know for sure that that's not Lyle and is some crazy alternate personality. How would you even know if someone was interested in you; reading it in a book and seeing it in real life are two very different things, Ms. Shrink!_

She repressed a sigh. What was the world coming to these days, that she didn't even trust herself with her own feelings; _look, understand, I've just got this feeling._

_Not good enough!_

Well, a friend would have laughed at her suggestion for her reason for needing to see Raines, or shown some amount of worry.

She remembered the note from Fulton she'd stowed in her pocket, and told herself that she wouldn't be tempted to read it.


	5. Chapter 5

"Do you know why?" Kim asked, from the shower cubicle beside his.

Reagan made no reply, but hugged his knees tighter to himself. Kim was a year older than him, and a Pretender, and _so much brighter_ – and his best friend. He still hadn't told Kim about seeing the dead; he'd told him about his 'brother.'

"Reagan?" Kim persisted. "Do you know why your brother's… can we say mind, felt the need to diverge one personality into more than one…? Dissociative Identity Disorder."

"I don't know," Reagan said finally, barely loud enough to be heard over the water.

"You're not even going to think about it? I mean, at all?"

"Trauma," Reagan replied dully.

"What sort of trauma?" Kim asked, genuinely interested, but not yet wanting to be spared any detail… maybe Pretenders never did come to that point, maybe, the person underneath did, but the Pretender part of them just ignored it. Like a dominant personality…

Reagan shivered. "His father was violent; physically abusive towards his mother and he."

"Much?"

"I guess so."

"Reagan?"

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know."

"I mean, with me asking you these questions?" Kim rephrased.

"Yeah; it's not me were discussing."

"He's your brother; you care about him."

"I'm okay," Reagan mumbled, then with more volume, "I'm okay."

"But there was a point at which the one personality diverged and became two, yeah?"

"I think it was when he killed Jimmy."

"Your brother killed someone? For real?"

"All the time. It's part of his job. He has a gun, for killing people, I suppose."

"I say," Kim replied. "Who was Jimmy, then?"

"Jimmy was his friend. They'd been best friends for a long time, then, for about two years, not so much."

"Girls?"

"Probably."

"Is that why he killed Jimmy? Because of a girl?"

"I suppose so."

"Then he kinda felt bad because Jimmy had been his friend for all those years?"

"He loved Jimmy," Reagan told him, just to be sure he understood.

"Okay," Kim replied, the sharp edge of waning surety glinting darkly in the corner of Reagan's eye saying, _Okay_, in Kimmy's voice; or, as it were, his mind, not his eye, he couldn't see Kim, he could just imagine him. _Bam! _Kimmy's voice said, really said. _Do I trust you? Are you just talking about your brother, or are you tying something to this? Us?_

Reagan shook his head slowly. He was sick of the shower, he wanted to get away from the water, he hated the way it slid over his skin, like it didn't care; _Hi_, _Bye_. "He didn't like killing Jimmy," he explained. "No, I mean, he was afraid, mentally, that he'd liked it, but he didn't want to… to have liked it. He didn't like it at all. That's why Teddy came about. Teddy doesn't _enjoy_ killing, but he does it, because it's their job; he wants to look after his brother."

"But Bobby wrote in his letter that they're not really divergent personalities at all?"

Reagan nodded, sniffed, wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Said, "Yes."

"So, Teddy is more of an extension of Lyle than he is of Bobby, so he shares the same view of them as Lyle does. We're different from you; we're divergent personalities."

"I guess so."

"Have you read anything on the subject?"

"No."

"You might want to."

"I don't believe everything I read in books."

"It's a starting point, though."

"What if it's the wrong starting point? What if whoever thought up the starting point did so to be deliberately misleading?"

"Okay. Why don't we just stick to talking about Lyle then."

"Whatever."

"I mean, he's your brother; you know him."

"No I don't. He never lets anyone in enough to 'know' him!"

"Okay."

"Shut up!" Reagan yelled, brushing away tears onto the back of his hand and feeling the streaming water carry them away. "You just keep saying that! 'Okay'! It's not okay!"

Kim was silent.

Reagan cried. He didn't know if Kimmy could hear him; he didn't care. He wanted his brother back. Was it so much to ask for? He'd never asked for much, nothing unrealistic: Brigitte, his mother; James, his father, officially; Kyle, who'd used to call him Huggles; or Thomas, who'd told him jokes that were a bit too old for him, so Kyle had to cover with something absolutely, laughably atrocious… if he'd got that it had been a ruse, it would have been _so_ funny, and so bad, bad, bad. Nobody ever teach you to tell jokes?

Stupid, mad boy! Normal people weren't supposed to see 'dead people'!

"Normal?" his brother had asked once. "You know what 'normal' is, don't you? What it means? It's like 'popular,' or, 'majority rules.' 'Common.' Well, people aren't like that. They are and they aren't. We're… all people, I guess you could say, and we're, basically we're animals, but… we're animals that like to be around other animals, you know, we'd get sad if we were on our own, I suppose, it's boring, being on your own; no-one to boss around, no-one to tell you it'll be okay. Normal isn't… normal is what we do; if we chose to look at it as good or bad, that's our choice; it's both, I guess, and, in a way, it's just… a thing… so it's neither. Just a thing. Your normal doctor likes normal symptoms so he, or she, can give you normal pills to fit the normal diagnosis, and, at the end of the very normal day, he can go home to his – there I go again with the 'he' – his normal life. Your doctor's a he, yeah?"

"Do you think that's all he ever," he forced himself to use the present tense, "does? Lie?"

"Lying is safer than telling the truth. Easier. He can pretend to be someone else. Someone without the troubles he has. Lying is comfortable, well, more comfortable than facing up to truth of the situation in front of other people."

"Like why he thought Bobby and he weren't the same person? They were different personalities? My father wasn't abusive to me, Bobby's was. Am I angry about that? Of course I'm jolly well angry about that! What sort of a question is that! A person hits your brother around; you're likely to get angry, aren't you?"

"Like that, yeah."

"But it scared him when he got angry, so he invented Teddy, because Teddy didn't get angry; he did what needed to be done, with no feelings either way."

"Yeah, maybe."

"Why?"

"Couldn't face it. All of it. Don't know that I'd do a much better job, myself."

"I don't believe you."

"He's not a case study you've read in some book, Reagan. He's a person – and he's your brother! I know you love him, but don't reduce him to _that_ because you're scared, or you're confused."

Reagan didn't say anything to that, but he'd started crying again.

The sound of the water was the only sound he could hear, for a long time after that.

"Are you two okay in there?" came a Sweeper's voice, a swish of an open door closing, footsteps.

"Fine!" Kim yelled back, over the din of the water. "Do you know what's happening with the water?"

"No. Why? Is something happening?"

"Yeah! I think it's colder!"

"Happens."

"Mine's the same," Reagan replied, coughing in the middle and saying the same again. "Mine's the same. It's not hotter or colder."

"As I said, it happens. Maybe you should tell the doctor this next time you see him, just to be safe. It's going around, I'm afraid."

"What is?" Reagan asked suddenly, his voiced strangely urgent, concerned.

"The flu. And, I hear, it's some new type of flu. Nasty. But you two don't need to hear all that, I guess, me raggin' on about myself. You've probably already had the shots, eh!"

"I've never been shot!" Reagan told him loudly, his voice closer to the door of his shower cubicle now, as though he'd got out of the shower and was now standing with his ear pressed to the door.

The Sweeper tried to get a look for his feet at the bottom of the door; nothing, the door didn't show much gap, went down to the floor. "Vaccinated," he replied.

"I was!" Kim piped up. "I don't know what it was, but I guess it might have been your thing, yeah."

"Yeah," the Sweeper agreed.

"If I was, Reagan will have been," Kim added.

"You'd think so." He shook his head. "Just so as I know you boys are fine; there's no troubles."

"No. We're fine," Kim assured him.

"Good to know, boys. Just doing my job, eh."

"That's all they want."

"You got that dead right," the Sweeper called back as he left the room to stand outside the door once more. "Will you boys be long?"

"We shouldn't be more than five minutes, I'd hazard," Kim replied.

The door swished shut.

"Are you nearly finished?" he asked Reagan, a few moments later.

"I'm done," came Reagan's plain voice.

"Good. Don't forget to turn off the water, yeah?"

A moment later, he heard the sound of Reagan's shower being turned off.

"You didn't get your towel wet, did you?" he asked cautiously.

"No."

"O- Right." He winced.

* * *

"Do you like my new pyjama?" Infinity asked them, with a grin, leaning forward as they passed her and she passed them, on the way to her turn with the showers. She gripped the bottom of her pyjama top and held it out for them to see, as though maybe they couldn't already do so, or maybe only in illustration; _here, take a look._ "I don't know what it is," she enthused, of the motif, "but I love it!"

Persephone hurried her along, without glancing at the female Sweeper who'd accompanied them.

"It's a palm tree," Kim called after her.

"I love palm trees!"

He smiled; he guessed maybe he would too, if he ever got out to see one again. Fin was getting along, turning out to be a real young woman; it was scary, he didn't like the chances of someone thinking… _hang on, maybe._ Infinity was his friend, and Reagan's friend, too. Only, she just happened to be a Pretender, also.

He tried not to let himself think how much it had shown, in her new pyjama set, that she was becoming a woman. Maybe, if he didn't notice it, nobody else would.

_You're kidding yourself, Kim!_ he mentally scolded himself. _They always notice! They never miss a damn thing!_

When he looked, Reagan had tears in his eyes.

He didn't ask why; then the Sweeper would want to know why, too.

_I'm so sorry!_


	6. Chapter 6

_"You don't know if Reagan didn't write this himself; look, I need some time alone to my thoughts, you know where the door is, I don't think I need to point it out!"_

Raines shuddered, folding the letter in his hands in half, into a smaller size, and glanced outside, through the diner window. He'd come to have tea, except now he didn't feel very hungry at all, and he still had his coffee to finish.

Through the window, he could just make out his wife's old car, the 1950s sedan, in the glow of a flickering light on the wall of the diner's outside toilet block – now only used for storage of cleaning stuff, or the likes – by the customer parking area.

_Don't think about Edie_, he told himself, _she's gone now; moved on, with any luck._

He put Bobby's letter away, and took out the piece of paper Persephone had left on his desk, saying that it was from Fulton, just before she'd left his office. He realised now, that he'd upset her. He'd not taken her seriously, when she'd been worried, and he'd upset her. _Oh, good job, William!_ he congratulated himself darkly.

Fulton's letter merely read: _It seems like we're always arguing. You're the shrink. You tell me why that is._ And then she'd just made a note of her cell phone number.

He frowned. Now Persephone, now Reagan, now Lyle; now Fulton. He needed this like a shot to the head! Oh yes! He laughed, but it was short lived.

The waitress might have glanced over at him in concern, on the way to serving some other customers, but it was only for a moment. He left the table, leaving a tip for the waitress.

The cold outside and the crunch of gravel under his shoes felt more real than the artificial lights and the hum of refrigerators, the quiet chatter of a badly tuned television set inside.

He walked to the car, wondering how Sam was getting along these days. His own son, and he didn't know. He stopped outside the car, to find the keys in his pocket, and laughed, but only ended up coughing.

There was no reason for it to be so cold, but, hey, was there really a reason for anything that happened; or maybe he was just getting old.

Maybe he was just lonely.

_Bloody Hell, does it always have to come back to one thing with you! You're getting insufferable in your old age!_

He opened the car and got inside. It might have been warmer, or maybe that was just him, wanting it to be warmer. The mind was a funny thing.

* * *

After dinner, Parker sat down at her computer to check her emails. Nothing important, except for a message from her email account company. One of the techs' nephews had been mucking around with his stuff when he'd been busy with a call; the kid – Markie, she gathered – had been off school, and the guy – Coen – had been minding him. Apparently he was learning French in school.

Parker logged out of her email account, annoyed, and slightly put out. She'd been… well, maybe… actually, she'd been hoping… it was something more.

She sighed heavily, and decided to pour herself a drink. How pathetic she'd become of late! To hope for something, anything, to break the suffocating monotony.

Maybe she'd try one of those internet dating sites, she thought, with a snort; she could wind Broots up about why he _still_ hadn't found someone. It'd be a laugh, and maybe Broots wouldn't take it the wrong way. They'd known each other for a while, years, really, and she might even have considered him a friend.

She poured herself another drink. Yeah, maybe…

* * *

Fulton grabbed the television remote and hit the button for Mute, picked her cell phone up off the coffee table, where she always left it, and answered, "Fulton."

For a moment, she only listened, then she switched the television off with the remote. She didn't say what she'd been doing, she only said that she'd be there.

* * *

Lyle made a face. He didn't know why he'd kept the stupid beads. They were only a couple of stupid beads, and it wasn't even as though they'd been his in the first place, they hadn't even been given to him; he'd stolen them off some kid from kindergarten when he'd still been living in the city. He didn't remember exactly why; he might have been jealous, maybe he'd thought they were cute – when he was _four_ – but now they just bugged the Hell out of him.

He took them off and left them on top of the fridge, then decided that, no, he'd take them outside to the trash. If he had anyone 'round, they'd think he was into voodoo. What a load of rubbish; he didn't believe in voodoo, same as he'd never gone in for the whole Harry Potter thing. He didn't care if Persephone thought it was a good book – books, actually – for kids to read, he personally wouldn't read it to any kid of his. What did kids need to read mumbo jumbo make believe stories for anyway? So that they could learn how to be better nutters?

He shook his head and walked back inside; it was too cold outside to stay out for any length of time, and he'd been thinking about going for a walk. There went that idea, he supposed.

It wasn't until he'd made it back into the kitchen that he noticed that he had a blood nose. Damn it all!

* * *

Parker sat up on the leather couch in her lounge room, and huffed. God! How crappy was it that she'd fallen asleep on her own sofa! It wasn't even as though she'd gone around to a friend's and fallen asleep on theirs!

_What friends?_ she thought sarcastically. That'd be the bloody day, that would!

She stood up and made her way toward what she supposed was probably the door, and, just as she'd hit the switch for the light – God, thank goodness for that! – she thought that she didn't remember having turned out the light.

She shivered, suddenly icy cold.

Someone had turned the light out for her!

* * *

"No coffeemaker," Fulton remarked, casting a quick glance around the kitchen she'd been led into.

"Couldn't be buggered learning how to use the blimey thing," Raines replied, though it sounded odd, she thought, without an American accent.

She sighed, pulling out a chair and standing, her hands gripping the back of the chair, without sitting down. "It's a tidy kitchen."

"Why do you want to talk to me, of all people?" Raines asked, frowning at her.

_Suddenly serious_, she thought jokingly. "Before you say, 'Why not Sydney,' I'd remind you that it's not Sydney I'm arguing with, five days out of seven."

He laughed, started coughing.

She left the chair and walked to the kitchen sink to pour him a glass of water, which he waved away with a quick, "No," even before she'd gotten over to hand it to him.

"I'm not the most talkative person in the world," she said, at length, turning back for a moment, to return the glass to the draining board, leaving the water in it. "And, we seem to be able to… I should say, so long as we're arguing about something, we're fine at talking, but it's not really talking, is it? I don't… do well, talking to others. I thought, if we could take a step back, maybe we could work around that. I don't suppose there's many people clamouring to your doorstep to talk to you, either."

He smiled – maybe a smile? "No."

"So, let's talk." She added, "I want to talk."


End file.
